If this doesn’t make you feel festive

As many a kindergarten panto santa has said before us, Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Reet Merry Christmas to all our readers!

Slightly premature, you might argue, as, there will, sadly, almost certainly be another sorry edition of BS News flopping listlessly into your inbox before the traditional midwinter festivities get fully underway, but we simply couldn’t resist bringing you a sneak peak at the exclusive bespoke photographic imagery exclusively commissioned for the 2013 Bankstone Christmas Card.

The charming rural scene depicted shows delightful North Yikes Moors hamlet Goatland where the trainy bits in various Hairy Potter films and large sections of the dismal noughties heritage TV “drama” series Heatbeat were shot. It’s dear to the hearts of Bankstone and friends too, as the scene of various instances of hanging around for hours waiting for someone or other to get their motorcycling shizzle togizzle in the seemingly interminable course of various of our annual charity fundraising monkey-biking epics.

Somewhat disturbingly, according to information yet to be moderated off Wikipedia, “Goathland also has the highest concentration of ‘Golliwogg’ dolls for sale of any community, not only in Britain, but the entire world. [citation needed]”

The idea was to capture an appropriately wintry aerial view of Goatlad entirely covered in snow. But we didn’t bring quite enough of those little polystyrene balls to get a decent covering, and then, by the time we’d sent for more, the helium had all leaked out of the balloony bit for our patent Bankstone-Gondola-Cam and it was getting dark anyway.